Hamer Guitars: Guitar Designer Jol Dantzig

Earthen Talladega in the Home Stretch

Today found Mark buffing and wiring one of the twenty five Earthen Talladegas. It's a good thing they're moving along, because we just got word from the NAMM show in Nashville that most of them were sold by mid-day.

Mark has already spent about three hours sanding the lacquer down to a fine grit—taking care to block all the surfaces flat with a hard pad. Then it takes him about an hour to do the final polishing. We use a 4 inch wide wheel that spins about 1100 rpm, with a fine abrasive compound. Then he'll move to a second set of wheels to glaze the finish and seal it.

After buffing, Mark shields the control cavity with a nickel-based conductive paint that we import from Belgium. It costs a ton, but it's the best there is—that's why we use it.

Then it's over to the assembly bench for hardware (another hour) and onto the wiring bench to hook up the electrics. In this photo, Mark is stripping the old-school, cloth insulated pickup wire before making all the connections. The legendary Sprague "Orange Drop" tone cap is clearly visible on the soldering mask that protects the back of the instrument from tools and hot solder splatter. We're using lead-free solder to keep in line with worldwide environmental practices too. It won't be much longer before I can play-test this one and snap some photos to show here.

One Thousand Lessons

Earlier in the week we gave a tour of our shop to a group of musicians who work day jobs selling guitars. As you might imagine, they were very interested, and excellent listeners too. Although they were here for a good long time, it occurred to me that it's impossible to even scratch the surface of what we do. This is never more apparent than when training an new member of our team, no matter how experienced they might be.

Here's Todd explaining the nuance of pickup alignment to our newest "apprentice" Colin Green. Eager to learn, Colin is a Reberto Venn graduate (but don't hold that against him) and he's continuing his education with one of the best. Todd is a veteran of two decades in the guitar building business, and there's a lot of knowledge to download in this situation. It can be an overwhelming situation, being thrown into the deep end of the pool, but Todd knows how to encourage raw talent; so we'll leave them alone and see what's going on at the opposite end of the room.

On the body bench, Mike is applying multiple-ply binding to a Monaco. Here you can see the stepped channel for the inner and outer binding strips. Each layer is laid up separately which keeps them from distorting when bent around a tight corner like the horn of the cutaway. On this guitar, there will be a purfling of mother-of-pearl between the two thin black stripes, so for now, Mike fills the gap with a layer of teflon material. That keeps the gap uniform, and the strip can be removed after the main binding has cured.

After a day of curing, the filler strip is pulled out, and Mike can start to glue in the pearl pieces, one at a time. In this picture you can see the way it's laid up and taped snug to the body. The f-hole has already been bound with two pieces of ivoroid as well. This is going to be a beauty—we'll stop back in a few days to see the pearl going in.

Night Falcon Bass on Stage at Last

My email inbox has been filling up with messages from Jack Blades who has nothing but raves for the Newport "Night Falcon" bass. Whew!

Jack says the sound is thunderous, and the FOH tech is loving it too. Apparently the new config has rendered all Jack's previous basses obsolete, so we're talking about building a spare... ASAP.

I'm thinking Orange with flames... what do you think?

Addendum 6/13/2008, email from Jack Blades:

[Dude]
This Blades Night Falcon Bass is the best sounding bass I own! Rivals my sunburst 84 Hamer Blades bass in all categories, but the most important one is attitude: How dare Hamer and Jol Dantzig have the audacity to make such a beautiful beast!

I am so glad they did.
All the best from the road,
Jack

Sunbursting the Earth

Now that our Earthen Talladega guitars have been block sanded smooth, they are ready for shader, which is what we call the transparent lacquer that creates the color. When we built the run of twenty-five Earthen Studio guitars I asked Gary to come up with a new sunburst color that evoked the origins of the special wood we were using. After some discussion and testing, Gary came up with a color I liked. It had a hint of brown earth tone, while still capturing the vintage fade we are known for. Of course, we named it "Earthen Burst."

This time around, the opportunity to depart from the obvious use of the special color was overruled by my desire to create the other bookend to the series—so Earthen Burst it is. It's our intent to shelve the color after we finish these twenty-five Talladegas in order to give them even more of a special identity.

One of the adjustments we made to the Earthen Talladega was to use Honduras mahogany for the body and neck. Because the Earthen maple has a bright snap to it, the maple neck of the Talladega would have emphasized just too much high end. The use of dense mahogany will offer balance. This creates a challenge to Gary, as the darker wood will require a reformulation of the shader for those parts in order to match the first run of limba guitars.

Here's the shaded (colored) guitar hanging in the paint room. The masking tape has been removed from the sides of the guitar, but as you can see the burst color is still present over the binding on the face of the guitar.

The next step is for Gary to scrape the color off of the top, revealing the ivoroid binding. For this, he uses a little knife that he's made from pieces of cellulose and an xacto blade. The amount of blade that protrudes from the handle will determine the maximum amount of width that can be scraped. Because the thickness of the binding will vary slightly (we're talking about thousandths here) Gary will angle the blade when needed to reduce the width of his cut. The object here is for the color to come just to the edge of the binding in a clean, crisp line. The easy and quick way to do this is to leave an overlap. There's always a little, but to us that looks shoddy unless it's really close. When you inspect a guitar, look at how close the color's edge comes to the edge of the binding. That's a pretty good way to judge how much care has gone into the building.

Here's the result, ready to go back for some topcoats of clear. The lacquer goes on over the color, then it dries for two days before being block-sanded again. Then three more light coats before drying a final seven days. That's a total of fifteen days for applying the finish and drying. The last sanding will bring the lacquer down to a thickness of about .011" before it's buffed out. We'll come back for that later.

Paint Time for Talladega Earthen!

The first coats of lacquer have cured so the Earthen Talladegas are ready to be colored. We always prepare the surface for color by applying a base coat of nitrocellulose lacquer to raise the grain and create "bite" for the finish. Our nitro is thin and it seeps down into the wood to provide adhesion. The first coat swells the grain and lifts any "fuzz" so that we can scuff it smooth when it dries. Then we put three more thin coats on, about an hour apart to allow the solvents to flash off. Then the whole thing cures for two days to make sure all the shrinking takes place before sanding, not after.

In this shot, Todd is sanding the first coats on the third day. We call this operation "leveling" because it is really more about getting the surface of the paint flat than just sanding. He's using a 400 grit paper and a rubber block to get any peel out and give the color a perfectly flat surface to go down upon.

You can see the natural color of the earthen maple top as well as the mahogany back. By setting up the surface for color instead of staining directly into the wood, we're able to create a depth to our colors that come from the fact that they actually "float" over the wood. It makes the burst appear "3D" when it moves in the light, something a stained top won't do.

We'll check back tomorrow to see Gary put the color on. See you then.

Custom Guitar Electronics

Every day in the shop is a challenge. Guitarists are constantly asking us for our opinion on how to satisfy their particular needs. Sometimes it's just a matter of prescribing something we're familiar with—those come from our vast experience of working with most of the aftermarket goodies. Other times, it may involve doing something for the first time. Generally, I don't like to experiment with a firm order. There's a certain ethical line we don't like to cross, and doing R&D on the customer's tab is one of them. So, when one of our clients asked for their Newport to be fitted with a Baggs system, we agreed because we'd done it before as a NAMM show sample with a good result.

This time, we were going to employ the full Baggs controls along with the electronics, so a bit of planning was involved. The idea is to make everything fit, be accessible and yet still look like it was designed as original—not an afterthought. We've all seen third-party electronics added to guitars where the job looked like a mess, and we didn't want that.

After Mike and I talked the control locations over, he went ahead and built the body up to the point where it was ready for the control holes. Then we physically laid the knobs and switches out on the body to double check their positions. Here I am jockeying the parts around while Mike takes some photos for future reference. It's important to leave enough room between the controls, and their position relative to the other reference points (bridge, tailpiece, etc.) is important too. I've found that we guitarists unconsciously use certain "landmarks" on the guitar to find our way around, so I wanted to make sure to factor that in.

Here's what we wound up with. Notice that the different size control holes are called out too. The Baggs system has a neat little stereo/mono switch that is designed to fit flush with the top of the guitar, so the thickness of the top will have to be adjusted in that area to make that happen.

Once we have the locations locked down, Todd transfers them onto a scrap piece of wood so he can begin building the wiring harness. This allows him to pre wire and test the entire system well before the guitar is ready for it. That cuts down on problems in the eleventh hour because if their is a malfunction we still have time to get a new one. It also makes it easier and neater to install.

All the wires can be routed and cut precisely to length outside the instrument. Any issues with crosstalk, noise or cutting out can be solved, and it looks neat too. We think that the inside should look as nice as the outside.

There's a lot of effort and time involved with every custom order whether it's a color adjustment or some one-off electronics. It rarely is a matter of just shooting from the hip. This little diversion has involved hours of emails, telephone conversations, workbench R&D time—and it's not even in the paint room yet! With the good planning that years of experience teaches, everything should go smoothly. Measure twice, cut once.

Talladega Earthen Guitars Shape Up

As readers of this blog know, we were lucky to find a small log of figured maple that had been submerged in mud. The resulting mineral staining gave this wood a unique character that we dubbed "Earthen" maple. We were able to get just over fifty pieces for guitar tops, the first twenty five of which we used for our original Earthen Maple Studio edition guitars. We documented their construction here, in the run-up to their official debut at the winter NAMM convention in January of this year. Those guitars were sold in less than ten minutes after being announced!

If you didn't get to see those guitars, here's a photo of the first one:

The guys in the shop had the idea to use the remaining pieces for a special run of Talladega guitars, and we've been showing you glimpses of those as the progress through our workshop. We think that they're turning out really nicely, so let's take a look.

Here is one of the bodies, already bound with cellulose ivoroid, resting in the morning sunlight as the work day begins. The next step is for Mike D. to brush on the paste wood filler. He applies the material and works it into the pores of the wood, then lets it flash off. Then it's a matter of wiping the excess off at the exact right moment. Too early, and it won't stay in the grain, too late and it won't come off at all. This gives the finish a nice flat surface that minimizes the sinking that is usually seen in lacquer finishes.

Here's the last of the run passing on the body bench.

Right next to Mike's bench, Jamie is prepping the last details on the matching neck. Here he's putting a flat surface on the side of the headstock with a cabinet scraper. We're really proud of how flat and uniform this surface is on our guitars. A lot of designs rely on curved surfaces to hide irregularities, but we like the challenge of making things flat. Believe me, other builders notice it because it's hard to do.

Each one of the maple tops has had a thin slice removed which is used as the headstock faceplate. It's another little detail that makes these guitars even more special. It means we have to keep track of all the components so that they all go on the same guitar, but the result is worth the effort.

After the filler cures for two days, the next step is to hand fit the neck to the body, so we'll have to come back to that later.

Falcon Bass Finally Flies!

Things really fell together for our "Night Falcon" bass project for Jack Blades. Apart from some foot-dragging at Schaller for our gold plated bridge, everything arrived on time, including the custom fitted case. With a medium scale (32") this little bird is easy to play, and the tone is spunky enough thanks to the semi-hollow, maple topped body.

The gold-plated bridge is massive and sits on a carved maple "platform" that is situated directly over a solid block inside the body. This gives the bass a really hefty response and a feeling of solidity too. All the gold hardware matches nicely, including the one-off gold covered EMG HB pickups. I like the clean look without any polepieces.

Here she is perched on a windowsill in our 140 year old mill building. The tortoise binding and ebony fretboard were good calls, the bass has a very unified look. The Hipshot drop-D tuner works flawlessly too.

I'm usually a fan of passive pickups, but for the punching and aggressive attack that Jack is looking for The EMG setup was perfect. I think this bird of prey sounds killer, I just hope Jack thinks so too. We'll hear back from him in a few days, so check back to find out if we pass the test.

Newport "Falcon" Bass Begins Assembly

While we were all being distracted by flying wood chips and holes being drilled, Gary had applied the paint to the Newport Bass for Jack Blades that we've nicknamed "White Falcon." The first thing everyone says when they see it now is "wow... that's really white" or something to that effect. It is finished in a blinding white lacquer that will age and yellow over time, but for now it's Whirlpool White.

Mark has buffed it out already and laid it out on the assembly bench along with all the parts. Jack is fond of the EMG HB pickups that we've been putting in all of his basses for years, so that's what I had in mind for this one. Problem was, Jack and I were determined to gussy this bird up with gold hardware, and EMG doesn't make gold pickups. Undeterred, I called up my buddy Rob Turner, the head honcho and kingpin designer at EMG and asked him to do it anyway. Now, Rob didn't get where he is by backing down from a challenge—he didn't even miss a beat when I asked. Sure enough, a few weeks later, here they are. Unobtanium. Thanks Rob.

At the left of the photo is the EXB control that I wanted to use instead of a tone pot. The EXB is sort of like the old school "loudness" control on a stereo system. It simultaneously turns up the bass and the treble, so it's a monster mod on a bass. At the eleventh hour Jack called me and asked if we could put a Hipshot "D" tuner on the bass so he could drop the low string a step with the flip of a lever. Thanks to Fed-X it arrived just in time.

Jack is doing a video and a concert for TV in two days, so everything was falling into place perfectly. It was just a matter of Mark putting the parts on and setting up the bass.

Typically the electronics get pre-wired into a harness on a jig that holds everything in place, then Mark slips it into the bass through the bridge pickup rout. This is a really trick setup—my little "ship-in-a-bottle" effect. I like the way it keeps the back of the guitar uninterrupted and clean. This bass gets the active EMG stuff, so the one exception is a trap door on the back for the battery. This is where planning pays off. We'll come back tomorrow and see how it turns out.

More Handwork Heroics

Yeah, OK... I know it's only drilling holes. So what's the big deal? We just wanted to pass along a little tip for drilling to depth. Dave is about to drill the holes for the tailpiece anchors in a Watson model using the trusty drill press. First he touches off the face of the guitar, then adjusts the stop on the drill press quill to his desired depth using calipers.

With the stop nuts tightened, he can then proceed with drilling. After setting the speed for the diameter of the bit, it's just a matter of locating the center punch mark with the tip of the brad point. With a slow, smooth plunge it's done and he's ready to do the next one.